Over the next two weeks I’ll be featuring a series of posts about the Juno Awards as they will be hosted in Vancouver on March 28th. My series will feature the awards themselves (from my view in the press box), satellite events, the street festival, and even the people involved in the process, such as the Uptown Gift Box Company.

On Friday March 27th at the shiny new UBC Thunderbird Arena, NHL alumni will hit the ice and take on Canadian musicians in the Juno Cup.

Juno Cup is an ever-growing popular event among fans that mixes music with sport, matching NHL alumni with top artists and entertainers in support of MusiCounts, Canada’s music education charity, associated with CARAS. Juno Cup has helped raise more than $700,000 for MusiCounts and music programs across Canada.

Canuck fan favourites such as Cliff Ronning, Dave Babych, Garth Butcher and Gino Odjick will take on the likes of Barney Bentall, Craig Northey, Sarah McLachlan, Aaron Pritchett and Captain Scotty from the CFOX morning show (just to name a few).

Tickets are $14.99 and available online, the puck drops at 7:30pm.

Tonight I’ll be at GM Place to liveblog the Canucks game. We’ll have photos, video, commentary and a live chat up on the Fan Zone section of Canucks.com, and we’ll also be following the conversation on Twitter, using the hashtag #Canucks.

Chris Zimmerman, President and CEO of the Canucks stops by the live blog

On that section of the site, you may also notice a new video player which will live stream tonight’s game versus the Colorado Avalanche.

Along with today being the 250th consecutive sell-out for the Canucks, it is also the Canucks for Kids Fund Telethon, benefiting Canuck Place Childrens Hospice. You can donate online or by calling (604) 777-CARE (2273).

The puck drops at 7:00pm Pacific time and you can watch the action on Sportsnet or follow along with Team 1040 radio.

Comedians, Peter Kelamis & Jamie Hutchinson

Update: Wow, the crowd is electric tonight and the game hasn’t even begun! We’ll be live blogging and chatting on the Canucks Fan Zone page alongside the live video stream. So many people are stopping by our kiosk (including Karl Dawson and his family) it’s really exciting.

Looking back, it seems the last time I wrote about CelticFest was in 2007 so I’m not sure what happened in 2008 but it may have involved a kilt and several pints of Guinness.

The official kick off to this multi-day event was on Wednesday but there’s more in store this weekend including the parade on Sunday, March 15th @ 11:30am downtown.

There will also be free entertainment on the Market Stage from 10:00am on Sunday, and the Celtic Village at the art gallery which will be filled with entertainment (including fun for the kiddies) on throughout both Saturday and Sunday.

Download Parade Map (pdf)

Street closures: 8:30 am and 2:00 pm – Alberni St from Cardero to Jervis, Broughton St from Robson to W. Georgia, Nicola St from Robson to W. Georgia. 10:00 am – 2:00 pm – Howe St from W. Georgia to Nelson 10:00 am – 2:00 pm – Parade Route, West Georgia from Broughton to Howe St. There will also be rerouting of buses.

This Sunday I’ll be at GM Place to live blog the Canucks game (along with Richard) as they take on the Colorado Avalanche. It will be an extra-special Fan Zone event because we’ll be out in the concourse along with the Canucks for Kids Fund Telethon, which will benefit children and families through the Canuck Place Childrens Hospice.

Canuck Place is a story of courage and vision, and a shining example of the good that comes from individuals and organizations seeing a need in their community and working together to fill it. In this case, there was a need to provide care for children with life-threatening illnesses and their families – an option that would give families the added flexibility to access hospice care when hospital or home care could no longer meet their needs.

This vision became reality in November 1995 when Canuck Place opened as the first free standing children’s hospice in North America. Today it is recognized globally as a leader in pediatric palliative care sharing knowledge, expertise and research regionally, nationally and internationally to assist in the further development of best practices in this field.

You can start your donations early online or on March 15th, throughout the game and TV broadcast (live @7:00pm on Sportsnet), they will announce various other methods to give. There are also incentive items such as a Trevor Linden Tribute photo and one of all of this season’s captains (should you donate at the $150 or $100 level).

You’ll be able to follow our game blog combined with some other fun entertainment this Sunday through the Canucks website.

Related posts: Canuck Place Day of Giving Radiothon, Canuck Place Adventure Challenge

I’ve been known for profiling dozens of local bloggers on my site however sometimes I offer up the option to new websites in town as well. The following is what I’ve been able to learn about Urbantastic from its Co-Founders Benjamin Johnson and Heath Johns.

How did Urbantastic come to be?
We met at Royal Roads University in 2005, and back in September 2008 decided to do something about how disconnected urban life can feel sometimes. Since then Urbantastic has been through a number of big changes, each time getting closer to our goal of finding ways to connect urbanites in real ways.

Ben is a CMA candidate, so he does all the accounting. Heath has a background in coding, so he does the website. Everything else is done by whoever loses the rock-paper-scissors contest that day.

How long has Urbantastic been around?
We started working together in September, but we incorporated as a non-profit on December 17th and the current iteration of the site was launched in the middle of January 2009.

What is it, what is it all about?
Our site is for anyone who wants to get involved with non-profits and other organizations that do good – anything from simply developing an awareness to actively helping out.

There’s two key lessons that we’ve learned since we’ve started:
1) The best way to make a real connection with your city is to work together with other people to make it a better, cooler, more interesting place.

2) The best way to get involved with these people has been invented already, but hasn’t been used very well in this space yet. The kind of creativity and involvement that Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube have going for them doesn’t need to be stuck on some server down in Silicon Valley – we can make our city better using the same kind of site.

How would people use your site?
Right now we’re adding features like madmen, but here’s what it will look like soon:

The first thing someone sees is the news feed. Think of it as a Facebook feed for all the non-profits and other organizations that do good in your city. If an organization makes a peep on the web, it shows up here: blog post, tweet, e-newsletter, etc. You can also comment and join discussions about what you read there.

From there you can start getting involved in small ways. You can join an organization’s posse (a little way to let them know that you support them), you can answer questions that they have (sometimes it just takes one person in the know to save an hour’s worth of research), and you can take on a micro-volunteering task.

Micro-volunteering is just what it sounds like: a bite-size way to help out a cause you believe in. It could be correcting the English in a document, or flexing your awesome photoshop skills, or using your van to drive a couch to the new office.

What is the ultimate goal for your site, how would you like to see it grow?
We’re a non-profit, so how we know we’re succeeding isn’t hitting ad-revenue target; it’s seeing people’s lives change for the better. It’s not going to be unrecognizable – you’re just going to know a few more awesome people, be able to point to more cool things that you’ve done, and have a slow steady stream of the little endorphin buzzes that you get from doing good.

First we’re going to make this happen for Vancouverites and Victorians, but we’re planning on quickly opening up to other large Canadian cities. From there, who knows? We might go for smaller cities in Canada, or go international.

What can people see, read, and do when visiting your site?
The main way to get involved in a non-profit right now is through traditional volunteering. This usually involves a volunteer resume, an interview, training, and a commitment of at least three months. It works okay but for a lot of busy people it’s too much.

Urbantastic breaks it down into a lot of little steps. First, you find out what’s happening at the organization – find out if it’s really something you feel passionate about. Then through small interactions like commenting or answering a question you meet who’s involved already – see if they’re your kind of people. By the time you’re ready to devote more time to a cause, you know who they are, they know who you are, and everyone knows what’s going on.

It’s a great way to get involved step-by-step. No muss, no fuss, no commitment until you’re ready.

How can people find out more
The whitepaper is a good place to start, and of course you can drop either of us a line, our contact info is on our about page.

Urbantastic can also be found on Twitter @Urbantastic.

Disclosure: This was not a paid profile